Journeys

Fruita
August 13, 2016

Appropriately enough, now that we have landed in the town of Fruita, we are rewarded with a thriving Saturday morning farmer's market and a bounty of vine-ripe produce. The choices were ample and the quality excellent. We enjoyed the location at a nice grassy park and the friendly vendors - purveyors of a variety of goods - and are continuing to savor the goodies we brought home. And as always in this state, we are totally loving a menu that always includes Olathe sweet corn.

This reminded me that autumn is not far off.

At a bakery booth.

Even a painting class!

The Perseids & a river . . .

A meteor shower always gets my attention and the Perseids is a particular favorite, so arriving on the peak viewing day spurred us to scout for an away-from-lights spot to enjoy the spectacle. Our camp site is only the proverbial hop, skip & jump from the Colorado River and the opposite bank is sparsely settled, so that was our search area.

Quickly veering off on a likely-enough-looking dirt road, we found ourselves at what the signs called a wildlife area. It was still early in the day; with trails calling, we were soon off and gone for a long, hot hike, most of which followed the river's course.

The area is managed for waterfowl hunting with irrigated farmed fields, wetlands and rows of windbreak trees. Many of the places where we tried to troop through thick brush to check out what was happening on the river, we came under attack by mosquitoes; that exercise wore thin very quickly, although we did enjoy watching a half-dozen geese marching two-by-two over to watch their great blue heron neighbor while the lone duck that had huddled with them looked forlornly after them.

Less-foliaged river banks allowed us to watch groups of canoeists and kayakers float by on the strong but placid current.

Zionesque - the heart of the world. . .

The real draw for stopping in Fruita was Colorado National Monument, a place we had heard about only recently. Reminiscent of Zion National Park, the mesa-top that dominates Fruita's southern horizon is a marvel of whorled sandstone cliffs, towering pillars and multi-hued convoluted canyons.

Not in the slightest what comes to mind when I think about Colorado, the Monument conjures Utah more than anything.

The place was promoted by early explorer John Otto, who became the official custodian of the region. Otto was a passionate advocate of the area's beauty, so much so that he wanted it to be accessible and known to the general public.

To that end, Otto pioneered routes through the canyons and with pick-and-shovel built trails and roads in hopes of getting people there to admire the majesty of the place. In addition, he wrote articles, petitioned governments, raised funds and generally threw himself into insuring those amazing mesas and canyons were known and preserved. His task was gargantuan, but he was evidently tireless in his pursuit.

Isn't it inspiring what a single person can accomplish!

Among his accomplishments was to be the first to ascend Independence Monument, the largest such feature in the park, a near-vertical 450-foot-tall monolith.

He managed the feat by using ropes tied to pipes that he drove into the rock and by chipping out small hand- and foot-holds. The pipes are no longer there; however, the steps are clearly visible and still used today. My stomach does flip-flops just to look at them and imagine climbing up there.

Hand- and foot-holds are visible in the upper sun-lit section.

Look closely; that gal is about one-third of the way up Independence Monument. She is being belayed by another climber who is not visible in the photo.

Quite the eccentric, Otto's mystique (I'm extrapolating here) lured a Boston artist into a marriage (performed at the base of Independence Monument), a union which was dissolved in short order. Within a year, presumably once the starry-eyed honeymoon was over, his bride was quoted as saying "I tried hard to live his way, but I could not do it. I could not live with a man to whom even a cabin was an encumbrance."

While wandering from one overlook to another and trying out some of the trails, we encountered Chuck and Pat from Oregon and exchanged photo ops. They, as we, were not too enchanted with the idea of selfies taken of 70-year-old faces from a distance of not nearly far enough.

The Book Cliffs are far off on the horizon across Grand Valley.

Tunnels blasted through solid rock reduce a few of the Monument's road twistings.

This view across a canyon in Colorado National Monument shows a portion of the Book Cliffs on the left and the edge of Grand Mesa on the right. Grand Mesa is the largest flat-topped mountain in the world.

The Book Cliffs beyond Fruita.

A curiosity - we found many sunflowers carefully placed far out on overhanging rocks in one place that required a bit of a hike to the rim. Next photo is of other types of flowers even further out. I wondered if it might have been part of a ceremony to spread someone's ashes.